


River Bottom

by dreaminglestrade



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Anxiety, F/M, Gen, Hypothermia, Ice Fishing, leave it to the professionals, the dangers of winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 16:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17584646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreaminglestrade/pseuds/dreaminglestrade
Summary: With nothing to sell in the dead of winter, the farmer goes ice fishing. She does not mean to go swimming.





	River Bottom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RumPixel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RumPixel/gifts).



**{This is my first Stardew Valley drabble. In fact, it's the first bit of writing I've posted to an account in over a year. So thank you, Rumpixel, for encouraging me enough to start and inspiring me enough to finish.**

**Hope you all enjoy this. No character death, but undeniably some close calls. Thank you to every single one of you who give this fic a chance. It means the world to me.}**

It was on the ninth day of winter that Eve decided she truly hated the season.

It had been bad enough in the city, surrounded by miserable people plodding through day old sleet and slush just to go about normal business. The constant crowding of tightly compacted bodies did little for one’s mood when the strangers on either side were muttering their own curses. 

Still, with an office job, there was the promise of heat and coffee. There was the knowledge that for every ten minutes spent outside, there was another eight hours of glorious _indoor_ drudgery. It made the cold bearable.

Here on the other hand, she was expected to rise and force her way through knee deep snow to tend antsy goats and chickens as displeased as she was. The heaters her neighbor had provided were nice enough and they kept the barn’s air on a low, soothing hum. She had yet to afford the auto feeders she’d coveted since fall however, so the chore of feeding each animal was still her own. Her concern for her charges had beat out her will to stay warm and dry beneath a pile of covers till spring.

“Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t ask for the freeze.” Chewie, a brown pygmy goat fond of raiding her pockets, had come to bleat irritably beside her. She spared the animal a tired grin and scratched at his ears fondly before ducking out into the snow again.

There was no point in going back to bed now, no matter how badly she wished she could. Not if she was to make even a dollar of revenue for the day.

Eve had abandoned the mines a week before after sighting what she was almost positive had been a ghoul. The literal gold mine beneath the town would have to wait until her courage returned. A spar with Marlon might do it, if she could swallow her pride.

But with the amount of snow the valley had taken on in the first week of winter, the soil of her farm had gone hard as rock. The greenhouse remained a crumpled pile of steel and dust and with no arable land to work with, she had downgraded to a few indoor plants for pocket change.

The best she could do really was try for perch, a couple lingcod if she could manage it. Willy had taken pity on her several days before, gently admonishing her and recommending she plan a little better the next year. Still, after a long, embarrassing silence, he had graciously offered a higher payout for anything she could catch waterside.

Good enough.

*

Eve had settled with the pond south of her farm. She wasn’t up to socializing, not today, and with the animals snug in their pens and the snow keeping most of her customers away, Marnie wouldn’t be venturing outside. Leah had proclaimed to her shortly before winter that she would also be spending her time indoors, taking advantage of the weather to focus on her work.

It meant a quiet trek to the pond and the company of her own silence. She was grateful for that. The people of Pelican Town were mostly kind, friendly folk, but they tended to be _chatty_ folk. It was nice, on occasion, to be alone.

She stopped to look up at the sky for a moment on her way. It was a cold gray, cloudy, and she worried for snow again later, but the color was so defiantly solid that it was pretty. The world around here didn’t move, didn’t whisper or shift.

Eve could admit it- in the city, it was loud, all the time, no matter the season. Even here, spring and summer were busy with animal chatter. The wind and the leaves cracked and whistled in the fall, but in the winter…

It was quiet. Gloriously still and quiet.

And it had been a long time since her mind had been quiet. Joja had demanded every moment of her attention for so long and the concerns over rent, her car, utilities, the crowd of people always present…

The farm had wiped it all clean and given her what she wanted. Quiet purpose.

By the time she reached the river, Eve’s hands were bouncing along her thighs. She rose onto her toes for a moment, feeling the lurch of uncertainty in the pit of her stomach. Big breath, in and out. Stretch and release. Nerves had risen up on the back of her neck, a reminder that she was out of her comfort zone, but after a moment they subsided, and she approached the ice carefully.

She’d done her research. Picked Willy’s brain and heeded Lewis’s warnings on what was safe and what was not, how to test it, how to prepare. She wasn’t going in blind, but the process was still new and she was alone for the day. Determined to stay that way.

Dropping her small bag of clothes and matches on the shoreline, she removed a small ice chisel from her belt to drive it into the makeshift ceiling of the pond. It was thick enough. Four, almost five inches- the pick came out clean and the ice shown back at her, a faded blue. No cracks. 

Pride and nerves warred with one another as she steeled herself forward, but she pressed them both down again. Venturing slowly onto the ice, she listened, waiting for the inevitable crack that sent her straight through. But the ice was solid. Slippery, as expected, but solid.

It would do just fine.

*

The hole had been harder to create than she expected. Eve had squeaked, an embarrassing sound she was normally able to stifle, as the ice had broken free. But the hole was compact, and the ice around it remained solid; no cracks beyond it had appeared.

It made for a surprisingly profitable spot. She’d caught nearly three fish in the first hour. Despite the cold and the falling snow, she’d come prepared- gloves inside gloves and so many socks that it had been hard to pull on her boots. Scarves wrapped cozily around her neck and face and for all the frustrations of the morning, the activity was relaxing.

She was hooking her fourth worm when she spotted someone on the edge of the pond. The familiar blue Joja jacket was a dark blotch against the white of the snow. That was probably the reason the company had gone with the color really. It stood out. The figure paused along the shore, and though they were bundled up to the face, she didn’t have to guess who it was. Only one person in Pelican Town wore that jacket, only one person slumped just so.

Eve’s hand fluttered in his direction, a greeting bursting from her throat. She stood, her arm raised, and the wind pulled her suddenly sideways. Her hair whipped right and she watched snow that hadn’t been there an hour before dust across the ice behind her.

And there it was… a long, aching groan coming from beneath her feet, as if the ice itself had taken on lungs. Some feet away, amidst the whirling cloud of snow, she saw the ice buckle and fracture.

The ground below her rippled. An angry hiss ricocheted into her eardrums. And then the ice gave way and she plunged into the arctic waters below.

*

Later, Eve found she couldn’t recall what exactly happened in the following minute. Harvey would tell her it was a coping mechanism, the way the brain fogged over a traumatic incident to minimize damage. But she would dream about it, in her lesser moments.

The biting cold.

The air being sucked from her lungs.

The roar of icy water rushing in and turning her clothes and limbs to weights.

Panic.

She wouldn’t remember actually _finding_ the surface again. That was the end result- her gasping and wheezing on the ice, her arms clutching at the edges of the hole she’d fallen through. Ice cold water seeping down her face and neck as her fingers scrambled for purchase. 

But the actual steps to getting there, the process of forcing enough feeling into her limbs to grab for a break or a crack or an opening was lost in that sheer drop.

All she could remember was the pain in her lungs, the immediate panic washing over just as fast as the river had. That there was no air, no light, nothing but biting cold dragging her _down_.

And something telling her to _kick_.

*

“-around you!”

Eve blinked, trying to determine where the sound- words, someone’s voice, was coming from. Her chest tightened and she sputtered again, sucking in air as freezing water tugged her back from the edge again.

No, no, no, no no- she was grappling for something in the water. Belt, pocket, pick! She yanked the tool free to drive it into the ice; her head stayed above water and with a pained groan, she hugged the edge again.

“-Eve!”

Her vision seemed to clear, so quickly and so sharp it was almost painful. A rope, hastily looped at the end, thumped down a foot from her hand.

The woman’s eyes drifted; Shane was yelling something at her from the shore, gesturing. Oh.

Shaking hands closed around the rope, but her fingers fumbled with it. She wondered vaguely if the rope was actually there at all and with a resigned sigh, she tugged it over her head, slipping her arms through and tucking her elbows into her abdomen.

It was an odd sensation, being dragged from the water by a force you couldn’t really see. Much like before, there was an end result, but how she got there was muddled, confused.

Something akin to a man’s roar bruised the air, and her legs bumped up against something solid, cold but flat. It occurred to her she wasn’t really sure whether she was still in the water or not. 

Her attention shifted, towards the sky again, and she wondered idly why it seemed to be drifting, it hadn’t been moving before-

An eternity later, Shane’s face appeared above her and strong hands slipped beneath her arms to pull her onto dry, glorious, _solid_ land.

*

“You’re okay. Take a breath.”

Painfully hot fingers grasped her face, holding her in one place, and she realized with a start that her lungs wanted _air_. She sucked it in through her teeth, gulping oxygen with great, heaving gasps.

The hands stilled against her cheeks as her eyes shut tight and her own fingers somehow found their way around Shane’s wrists. 

“F-fuck.”

“That’s a word for it.”

A grin wormed its way momentarily onto Eve’s lips. Shane’s voice rolled into her ears, a baritone hum against the roar in her head. Pressure pounded against the backs of her eyeballs, thudding painfully up towards her skull. She opened her mouth, some question lingering on the edge of her tongue, but her teeth knocked together hard as her body began to tremble.

“Clothes off.”

The demand came as a surprise to her, one Shane Daniels hardly seemed capable of making. Something in the back of her mind argued it was a reasonable request in this particular situation, but the louder part of her protested.

“It’s cold. There’s snow.” Yeah, that was it. It wasn’t the ice. It wasn’t the water coursing into her ankles and neck, clinging wet and cold to her chest and legs. It was the snow.

“Just do it, Twitch.” There was a strange tilt to his voice, and through the roar in her ears, she wondered if it was concern she was hearing. Frustration had been Shane’s main emotion for as long as she could remember. If she had been able to think straight, she might have felt touched.

As her fingers plucked idly at the soaked cotton of her pants, she meant to comment on the nickname her friend had given her. She was _Eve_ , not Twitch, and she didn’t fidget that much, and heavens, was she stripping in front of him- this wasn’t how she’d wanted to go about it-

But her tongue seemed to be just as stuck as her fingers.

“You’re gonna-” A quiver ran through her voice as another shudder ran through her body. She swallowed. Tried again.

“-have- have to help me.” Her hands wouldn’t work. They bumped against her clothing and she couldn’t recognize when her fingers made contact. The digits had gone numb long before she ever left the water and each time she closed them, the action was late. Her fingers would bounce against the fabric, hum with cold pain.

She couldn’t handle this. She couldn’t manage undressing. Yoba, she couldn’t manage one stupid, simple, everyday action-

Panic jolted up her spine again, the anxiety sending another shock of adrenaline through her. Her shivering intensified and Eve pressed her nose into Shane’s collarbone. Heat seemed to emanate off his skin and not bothering to ask, she burrowed into him. He was so warm and it was so fucking cold and if he’d just stay still.

Shane’s hands drifted to her waist, caught between uncertainty and decision, and she vaguely made out a warm thumb dipping between her waistband and her hip. Her eyes drifted from the man’s shoulder to his hands and back to the sky. Eve had the ridiculous thought that making him blush might offer her a little more heat and she considered leaning into his hands for the effect.

She’d considered the option before really, though in a different circumstance, along with his lips and his jaw and his legs and-

A tapping on her forehead brought her back to the present and she found Shane watching her with a troubled frown. His cheeks were a soft pink, an odd color on him, and she realized slowly that they’d managed to get her socks, pants, and half of her sweater off at some point.

Shane had removed his jacket in the interim and wrapped it around her, whether for warmth or integrity, she wasn’t sure. 

Where had her mind been? And why was she still so cold? And why were they still sitting in the snow? She realized with trepidation that she was missing large chunks of the past couple hours- how she got from point A to point B, from here to there. From onto the ice to into the ice to placing herself in a human furnace’s arms and- 

“Shane! Oh, thank Yoba-” A familiar voice came from their left, but it seemed almost muffled, as if someone were shouting from behind a wall. Footsteps approached at a run and a woman whose likeness she couldn’t quite place barreled to a stop before them.

“Harvey’s on his way. Let’s get her inside.”

Eve’s heartbeat thudded painfully in her chest and she curled into herself, straining from the cold. Couldn’t they just stay put?

“Stay.” Her voice came out tired and the sound of her pulse increased exponentially, sending her head into a dizzying whirl of pressure.

The world seemed to bend and fold, the figures around her rippling and transforming, before her vision went black entirely.

*

She was _warm_.

Soft fabric surrounded her. Warm pads pressed into the back of her knees and feet. Eve’s fingers brushed against the heavy cloth draped across her shoulders and Yoba, she could feel her fingers. Her toes, her legs, her body. It hummed, almost painful, as if someone had pulled out her insides and re-stuffed her with cotton, but she could feel again.

The smell of hay and cinnamon drifted into her nose and she released a long, contented sigh.

Eve’s eyes drifted open, half-lidded and still feeling as though they were weighted. But there it was, the familiar walls and chairs of the Daniels’ ranch. She could hear someone moving about the next room quietly, puttering away in the kitchen. A single lamp shone low in her periphery.

Shane dozed in an armchair across from her, his legs outstretched to touch the couch she lay on. She wondered vaguely if he’d been there all afternoon, all night, however long it had been that they’d hauled her in out of the cold.

The cold.

The ice.

Pressure in her chest mounted as realization fought against exhaustion and she pressed her face into her pillow. Stupid, stupid, stupid, had she really fallen through the ice, been so unexperienced that she’d denied a spotter, required a rescue team to yank her out-

Strangled panic emerged from her throat as a whimper; her elbows yanked at the covers around her and she pushed herself halfway to sitting before a warm hand caught her shoulder.

“You’re not supposed to be up yet.”

Shane blinked tiredly back at her as he slowly pressed her back into her original horizontal position against the cushions. There was a long moment of quiet, interrupted by the hammering in her throat as her heartbeat struggled to slow again. His hand moved, brushing against her cheek so softly she wondered if she’d imagined it.

Then it was gone again and his head was back on its rest, his expression guarded as always.

“Didn’t have to prove you’re a city kid, you know.”

Shame coursed through her, and her gaze dropped to the floor. Where she’d been trying to escape the cloying grip of the blankets before, she sank into them now. Tucking her chin into her chest, she pulled one over her ears. Her limbs seemed to pulse, an angry reminder that moving was perhaps not the safest route to take just yet.

A sigh eased out from Shane’s direction and her friend bumped the couch with his foot just enough to get her attention again.

“It happens. Just… ask someone next time.”

Venturing a glance at his face again, Eve watched as his expression shifted again into one she imagined to be concern. But it was unsure, almost fearful, and she realized after a moment that she knew that look. She’d worn it before on numerous occasions, when a sense of dread had her waiting for the bottom to drop out.

“I’m not going anywhere, Shane.”

That was it. That was the problem. She’d placed herself so directly in his path, finally gotten him to trust her enough to coexist, maybe even to enjoy her company, then nearly repeated the very event that he’d clammed up from in the first place.

But she’d intended, wanted to become a permanent fixture in his purposely small world. Despite the fuck up that was the ice, she wasn’t aiming for that to change. For all her uncertainties, Shane Daniels was a factor she wanted to keep in whatever direction she was wandering.

He was frowning again, his lips trying to form words he couldn’t quite voice. It was something he seemed to do often with her and it rarely achieved anything beyond another drink at the Stardrop. It would require a whole case if she didn’t put a stop to it now.

Eve pulled her her right hand from beneath the blankets and without bothering to consider the consequence, hooked it into the folds of Shane’s shirt. There, the surprise she’d been going for- she pulled him forward, taking full advantage of it, and pressed back into the couch.

“I’m not. Thanks to you.” She tugged at him again as he paused, considering. “I’m still cold. Do something about that.”

Half an hour later, Marnie would discover her nephew asleep with his arm wrapped around the farmer’s waist, Eve’s head tucked firmly beneath his chin.


End file.
